I stand next to my mother, sobbing into her sleeve. The officers jostle my little sister forward to the edge of the cliff. Does she not realize what is about to happen? Does she not realize that if this goes as the government has planned, we will never see Lilly again?

My sister’s black hair is rustling in the cold wind that blows around the small cluster of us. She glances around, sees an officer, giggles and raises her arms up, signifying that she wants to be picked up. She has mistaken the officer with a little black beard for my father. She cooes waiting for the man to hoist her up so that she can see what is on the other side of the gate that divides her from death.

She smiles her gorgeously grotesque smile at the officer.

“Up.” She says her first and only word she has learned in her seven years.

“Up.” The officers stare with cold, disgusted eyes. They want nothing to do with this disfigured child, the one whom they are morally and legally obligated to dispose of. I wonder how many times they have walked out here, listened to the cries of the children and the whimpers of the mothers. I suspect they have done it enough times to become numb to all this, to block out the sheer anguish of the situation.

“Up.” Lilly pleads now, her lopsided eyes beginning to water.

Again, the officers ignore her, but this time two officers step forward, one on each side, like hateful bookends. One grabs her pudgy left arm; the other, her right. They guide and shove her forward, so she is just teetering on the edge of the cliff.

Because of the genetic purity laws, the government has begun to eradicate the line of weak genes that cause developmental problems. So they issued an edict that every child who is born with a genetic deformity must be executed in order to avoid passing down this gene to future generations. They are disposed of in the least difficult way possible, by gravitational pull as it lures them to the bottom of the chasm.

It is I who must comfort my mother now, holding her as I can feel her entire body tremble. Every part of her quivers except for her eyes, which remain locked on the little girl precariously standing near the edge of the cliff, her youngest daughter, tottering on the brink of death.

I watch, terrified yet unable to tear my eyes away, as an officer with a small black beard hoists Lilly onto his hip. She claps her hands together.

“Up.” She laughs, and the sound echoes off the canyon’s edge as the officer holds her out at arm’s length, her stubby legs dangling over the gap in the earth. She screams in fear and excitement. I wish I could reach out to her, to secure her, and bring her back to my arms. But instead, my fingers have begun to bruise my arms from crossing them so firmly. If I speak up at all, I could be going the same way she is.

Why are they taking her away? She never caused any problems. Even as I think it, I know that isn’t true. She almost killed my mother in childbirth. She nearly lost my father his job. Having a child like her in the family can bring great shame, and my father would have been fired if he had not agreed to this punishment, the one we have been forced to watch.

The officer sighs, unclasps his hands, and lets my little sister fall into the cavern.

A little bit of me tumbles into the chasm with her. A bit of me that I will never recover for as long as I live.​How cruel that the girl whose first, last and only word was “Up," had no place to go but down.